Ottawa police are probing the possibility a man who might have drowned in a river in the nation’s capital during a pursuit is a suspect in a high-profile homicide in London.

Meanwhile, the suspect’s father, Sultan Sultan, told The London Free Press he’s appealing to God to keep his son alive and to his son to turn himself in.

Muhab Sultanaly Sultan, 23, of Calgary, is wanted by London police for second-degree murder in the June 14 shooting death of 18-year-old Jeremy Cook, who’d been trying to retrieve a cellphone he’d left in a taxi.

As crews searched the Rideau River Thursday after Ottawa officers saw their suspect slip below the surface Wednesday night, the London suspect’s father was fearful his son had, indeed, drowned.

“I feel terrible. I am shaking. I am crying. I am praying to God that this person is not Muhab,” Sultan Sultan said.

To his son, he said: “Please, Muhab, if you read this, listen to me. I love you and I will always love you forever (whether) you did this or not. I will get you the best lawyer in the land and we will walk hand in hand into the police station.”

Sultan stood by his son’s innocence, saying Muhab is not a murderer and would never do such a thing.

The father also sympathized with Cook’s family.

“To the family, I feel deeply, deeply sorry. Our hearts go with them. We have deep sincere sorrow for them,” he said.

Sultan said he hadn’t learned anything from Ottawa police beyond what had been reported in the news.

His son might never turn himself in to police on his own, because he spent more than a year in jail in London on two sets of charges — one for weapons and trafficking offences, and one for sexual assault — that were later dropped, Sultan said in a series of short phone interviews from Calgary.

“He lost this time of his life for nothing.”

All the time he was in jail in 2011 and 2012, he never said a word to police about who really did the crimes, the father said.

Police believe the same man who might have drowned in Ottawa tried to run down two bicycle patrol officers with his vehicle during a traffic stop around 4 p.m. Wednesday.

One officer suffered minor injuries.

The vehicle was later abandoned after a pursuit and a male passenger was taken into custody. The driver escaped into a nearby wooded area.

Sultan Sultan emigrated to Canada from Sudan in 1991 and with his wife raised two sons and a daughter in London, where they were well known in the Sudanese community.

Efforts to find the fleeing suspect by Ottawa police with a tracking dog were unsuccessful, but hours later a man was spotted trying to swim across the Rideau River. Two officers “went into the water after the man, who was showing signs of distress,” police said in a release.

“As the officers got closer to the suspect, he went under the water and has yet to be located,” police said.

Pedestrian walkways and bike paths in the area remained closed as part of the search.

Originally from Brampton, where he started his own business building and selling Muskoka chairs last summer, Cook was living in London when he left his cellphone in a taxi. He used an app to track down the phone and ended up in a parking lot on Highbury Avenue with a relative at 5 a.m. June 14.

London police say there were three men in the car originally, but one left amid the conversation about the phone. The driver tried to leave and Cook grabbed on to the car, which travelled up Highbury.

Gunshots rang out and Cook was found dead behind a plaza at Highbury and Huron.

Cook’s death has attracted wide attention and prompted warnings about the risks of software applications that track stolen phones and other devices.

Ottawa police said Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, which investigates deaths and other serious events involving police officers, has been called in to investigate the possible drowning.

London police said they’re working with Ottawa police to determine if the missing man is Muhab Sultanaly Sultan.

London police have also been looking for two other suspects, neither of whom has been identified, in Cook’s slaying.

One is described as a black man with very short hair who wore a black jacket or shirt and a fitted hat.

The other, whom police say walked away from the car during the confrontation, is a black man with a slim build.